Reckless Dark Desire
by Nitrospira
Summary: Tron Legacy :: What befalls Quorra when Clu takes matters into his own hands?
1. The Turning Point

Reckless **Dark **_Desire_

I.

Quorra wasn't easily frightened.

That fact, however, quavered just as violently as her resolve when the chilling glow of orange on black caused her green eyes to snap upward.

Clu – the evil twin of her beloved Creator – strode towards her with a feral grin that reached into her very code and obliterated any form of rational thought. Her mind just couldn't grasp the reality of the situation… that the same eyes, same face that had gazed at her with so much compassion years ago were now aglow with dark delight at her capture.

He came to a stop barely a foot away from her. She wondered briefly if he knew how torturous the proximity was and stood so close as a mockery of her waning strength, but when his hand stroked her cheek with a gentleness that didn't seem to fit the situation at all –

"You're a rare bird, aren't you?" A new, even darker emotion was evident in Clu's voice.

"Thanks to you." Quorra was glaring at him with all the ferocity she muster, but it was to no avail. Might as well try to intimidate a black hole.

"And why would such a proud creature fly so willingly into my cage if she did not want to be caught?" There it was again: that perversion of the smile the Creator bore so frequently. It was beginning to agitate her.

"Because I am loyal to the Creator." She said firmly, tilting her chin up ever so slightly.

"Hmm…" he trailed his hand from her cheek across her collarbone. In a quick, discreet motion, he pulled her sleeve up over her ISO marking. "We shall see about that. Rinzler, take her to my quarters."

Quorra watched as Clu backed away, and felt as his henchman program clasped her arm and began to take her elsewhere. Deciding to resign herself to the fact that she wasn't derezzed yet, and wasn't immediately in dire straits, she allowed a sigh to escape her.

"Wait."

Rinzler came to a halt at Clu's order. Along with her heart.

She felt a hand grip her shoulder. "I'll take her myself."


	2. Elevator Music

II.

"_I'll take her myself."_

It was at that moment that Quorra realized that she was – irrevocably and without doubt – in _very _dire straits.

At the faintest indication of a push, she began striding forward. She hoped that compliance like this would limit the amount of physical handling she received from Clu, yet when the hand on her shoulder pulled her to a halt and slid languidly over her neck, she wondered if gaining any sort of edge in a game with Clu was impossible.

"Why the hurry, babe?" he said nonchalantly, holding her closely next to him before beginning to trek forward.

She shuddered at the reference. Did the prospect of world domination cause his coding to go haywire? Not that he was anything short of insane before she 'removed herself from the equation.'

"I thought that acting more like that User of yours would put you at ease." He pointed out upon noting her discomfort, glancing down at her.

"Kevin Flynn always treated me with respect." She practically growled, meeting his gaze with a sidelong glare. "And the concept of you trying to put me at ease is both laughable…" she trailed off, not wanting to expose her emotions further.

But Clu had noticed the opening and – ever the gamer – took advantage of it.

"Both laughable and…" he laid his palm flat against her head and pushed it so that she now faced him. He only saw her through the corner of his eye, but it was enough attention to unhinge her defenses.

"Terrifying." Quorra's voice squeaked between the syllables. She cleared her throat and said in her best disinterested tone, "As you already know, you're terrifying to me."

"Hm…" he stopped, facing her directly as he leaned slowly forward.

She didn't have time to formulate a reply. Within the span of a breath, Clu was inches away and closing.

"That's all?" he asked curiously, as an arm reached around her.

"I don't – " her words were cut short when the floor below them began to race upwards, sending a jolt through her body and causing her arms to involuntarily grab his torso in order to steady herself. The contact lasted for only a moment, before they simultaneously stepped back from each other.

He had led her into an elevator… she had just been too distracted by their banter to recognize it. The reason he had been so close was to reach the buttons behind her.

Yes – that was it. Or at least she wished that was it… the soft chuckle that escaped her captor suggested otherwise.

"Flynn always was obsessed with the innocence of the ISOs." Clu said, watching her carefully. When she furrowed her brows in confusion, he elaborated. "You're blushing, sweetie."

_What?_ Quorra fumbled farther away from him, turning her back to the program.

"I told him many years ago," she heard Clu continue. "That the creations of a still imperfect system couldn't be anything but an obstacle to our goal of a perfect society without proper refining. He only saw their _indescribable beauty…_ and when he refused to listen to my reasoning, I realized something that would change my life…"

Quorra watched from over her shoulder as Clu looked down through the transparent walls of the elevator at the illuminated Grid shrinking below them.

"I realized that while programs and The Grid had all the potential for perfection, it was Users that would forever hold us back. But you ISOs proved too loyal to that blind Creator, and so… well, that part of the story you know." He smirked at her in a way that fragmented her fear codes and replaced them with an itch for violence she had yet to experience.

"You… you…" she seethed, reflexively reaching for her identity disk before recalling halfway up that she had left it behind. Clu snickered at the action and, just as the elevator was coming to a stop, she did something a rational program never would.

"Murderer!" she bellowed, lunging at Clu with a fist raised. He sidestepped it just in time, but didn't retaliate quite as fast… likely because she had acted in a way that utterly shocked him.

His knee rose to strike her in the abdomen, yet his millisecond delay was enough to allow her to intercept the incoming appendage with her palm and use it to prop herself up and partially land a roundhouse across his face. He caught her leg while she was still airborne and used it to spin her in a semicircle about him before she crashed against the wall with enough force to make her lose partial control of her motor functions for a while.

"I will refine you." He said breathlessly, his pants of air breaking against her face. "And you will learn that I am more worthy of your love than your pitiful _Creator_…"

The elevator doors opened with an unceremonious 'swish'. The sound that came after that, however, was far more unexpected.

"QUORRA!"

That voice. _His_ voice.

"SAM!" she used her remaining strength to answer him. Afterward, with a soft sigh, she fainted dead away.


	3. Close Encounter

Quorra's last desperate hope before collapsing to the ground was to awaken safe and protected in the company of the Flynns. Instead, a sudden lurch caused her systems to hastily finish rebooting. Her eyes flew open, and she would have flailed had she not been bound to a chair.

"Welcome back, my little bird. It's been _far_ too long."

She inwardly groaned upon hearing Clu's voice beside her. Vision now restored, she discovered that she was in an aerial shuttle of some sort. They were flying at breakneck speeds towards a vertical light she knew all too well was the portal to the real world.

The Creator's world. Sam's world. The one she had prayed would one day be hers to share with them.

But her eyes caught sight of Kevin Flynn's identity disk looped around Clu's elbow. She acknowledged that the game was, in all principle, won at this point…

"Where is Sam?" she questioned him loudly.

Clu gave her a soft, sardonic chuckle.

"Don't you _ever_ think selfishly?" he turned to gaze at her incredulously. "You know that you have every reason in the world to be concerned about a slow death at my hand, yet your first words are about Flynn's boy?"

"You have what you want." She nodded at the disk. "Now, what did you do to…" her voice trailed into oblivion as they flew slowly over the platform immediately surrounding the portal. A man dressed in white stood on the narrow pathway leading up to the searing column of light.

Her heart started to beat frantically.

"What are you going to do to the Creator?" she struggled against the cords holding her in place, but gained no leeway.

"So many questions…" he muttered to himself, allowing his aircraft to land some distance in front of Flynn. "I have business to take care of now, but rest assured – " he rose from his chair, and she listened to each slow step he took before coming to stand before her. Quorra bristled as he arched over her, placing a hand on either one of her immobilized forearms, and steeled her nerves as he leveled his gaze with hers.

"Once I finish here, I'll deal with you exclusively." A smirk began to tug at the corners of his mouth. She turned away upon feeling her muscles twitch nervously.

She calmed herself with a few quiet breaths, ones which were promptly deepened when she felt lips brush languidly against her neck. Abruptly, a hand wound itself into her hair and inclined her head further down, allowing him to travel smoothly across the underside of her chin.

"No…" she gasped, willing her consciousness to evacuate from her now chaotic mind.

"I am yet to have everything that I want." He pulled away from her, straightening so that she could now perceive him as a physical as well as psychological titan. His hand brushed against her cheek, much like it did upon their first meeting. "You couldn't even begin to understand."

And after a moment, all she felt of his presence was the slight tussle he caused in the air as he strode towards the exit.


	4. Portal

IV.

Minutes crept by with an agonizing slowness. Quorra felt each second like it was a marble moving slowly through her veins.

This painful hyperawareness didn't keep her from struggling against her bondages… but CLU was not the kind of villain she often read about in Flynn's books: he was as ruthless as he was thorough. If the systematic genocide of the ISOs wasn't evidence enough, then the careful, intricate knots he had tied behind her definitely were.

Her Creator, the one that she expected was now facing the likes of CLU without even an identity disk to defend himself, was just as detail-obsessed. The perfectly white walls and floors of their off-Grid hideout and the meticulously arranged knick-knacks were only the start this… _quality_ of his.

After all, what could one expect of a man who constructed a world out of 0's and 1's?

Quorra shrugged off the notion that the two clones were more similar than met the eye, and leaned her head back against her chair, squeezing her eyes shut to prevent their watery sheen from leaking out.

Everything was going horribly wrong because of her; she didn't listen when the Creator had told Sam and her to avoid taking CLU's bait, and now…

Footsteps interrupted her reverie, causing her head to snap up and lock gazes with someone she would have usually recognized without a doubt.

"Rinzler?" she said softly, eyebrows tensing together when she realized that there was something amiss. Minute aspects of his figure were somehow just _off_. She didn't know why, but it made her stomach churn.

His dark shape was closing in on her _fast, _identity disk gripped in his steady palm.

"Leave me alone, I won't – " a small scream of surprise escaped her, just before the disk came crashing down in front of her, slicing through her bondages. In the span of a heartbeat, however, the person who had freed her ensnared her upper arm in its gloved hand and led her towards the exit.

"What are you doing!" she hollered as the doors parted automatically, a gust of cold air making the hairs on the back of her neck rise. Standing a few yards away were the Creator and CLU. The latter one turned and raised his arms at her approach… or so she thought.

"Finally! A son I can be proud of." he smiled cruelly at her expression of utter terror. Wide-eyed, Quorra looked shakily up at the tinted helmet of her captor.

"S-Sam?" she looked from him to CLU, her eyes taking on a possessed gleam. "You monster!"

"I found an interesting little fact in his data files before I reconfigured him…" CLU continued, ignoring the ISO and facing the equally livid Creator. "Evidently, I would die if you were to die while on the Grid. So while my intention had been to eradicate you the moment I next saw you, my _improved _plan involves me disappearing off into the flawed reality you called home while you, _Creator _..." he stepped backwards so that he was now side-by-side with Sam.

"I'm going to watch you and that ISO chase what's left of your son into oblivion." He proclaimed. For a long moment, creator and creation locked eyes in a sort of hellish psychological spar that ended with CLU's arm rising swiftly to strike the helmet off the head of the figure still holding her, revealing that it was indeed the son of Flynn.

"Starting _now_." The sneer had scarcely left CLU's lips before Sam instantly released Quorra and race forward. His father immediately made part of CLU's desires a reality, shedding his coat and sprinting as fast as his aged legs could. Quorra lunged forward to follow them on instinct, but upon catching sight of CLU's delighted smirk, she pulled back her knee and did something completely reckless.

"Ass_hole_!" she bellowed, her first use of colorful language making her tongue sizzle as she kicked out at him without inhibition. For the second time in a millicycle, a mere program had managed to catch him off-guard with irrationality more often than the Users he was forced to deal with. Maybe he had been right in disposing of them… ISOs were formidably unpredictable beings.

Whether or not he realized any of that was, however, inconsequential – what mattered was that he now clung to the edge of the platform, and an ISO was staring down at him with pure enmity before her eyes darted towards Flynn's identity disk, which had been knocked from CLU's grip and slid closer to the portal.

"Don't you _dare…_" seethed CLU, but she was already sprinting towards her final opportunity at saving Sam, Kevin, and even the entire Grid. Just as she knelt down to scoop up the disk, she heard CLU pull himself back onto the platform, causing her heart to beat with renewed vigor as she ran desperately towards the portal.

As she stepped into the all-consuming light, she heard malicious words and rapidly approaching footfalls. Breathless, she held the disk above her head.

_Take me away, take me away, TAKE ME AWAY! _Quorra mentally pleaded, comforted by the sensation of her data fragments being analyzed and pulled apart. She dared think for a moment that she had gotten away… until strong arms wrapping themselves around her waist informed her otherwise.


End file.
